Latin verbal system: how perfect and aorist joined in the new perfect?

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

-----Original Message-----
From: petegray <petegray at btinternet.com>
Date: Tuesday, June 01, 1999 10:18 AM

[Ed Selleslagh]

I would like to add some comments even though I agree with almost everything
you said:

>There are several points in Steven's posting on Classical Latin which
>require response.

>Firstly, There is no need to suggest that Classical Latin was ever at any
>stage actually spoken.    It has its sources in many things, not least the
>drive to produce a language as capable of great literature as Greek.   We
>can even trace in the literature the development of the so called Classical
>Norms, as certain forms or constructions are felt to be in some way more
>appropriate than others.   The achievement of Vergil and Caesar (rather than
>Cicero) is to write great Latin within the norms which had been established
>for written literature over the previous hundred years.

[Ed]

Remember that Caesar usually spoke Greek with his family and friends.

>We know that Caesar, Cicero and the rest spoke very differently from the way
>they wrote (see Cicero's more intimate letters); and we know that the drive to
>refine the language begins in earnest somewhere between Plautus (writing about
>200 BC) and Terence (writing after the full impact of Greek literature has hit
>Rome, and dying in 154BC).  The spoken language continued as spoken language
>does, with the educated people using some of the more "refined" forms in their
>speech, but not all, while the less educated used few or none.

>It is the connection of this spoken language to proto-Romance that is
>puzzling.  A simple equation of the two is not adequate, as it leaves lots of
>problems.  For example, the common (in both senses) pronunciation of -au- as
>/o:/ is "extremely well attested".  Yet in Romance the vowel seems to have
>been not /o:/ but short /o/, and the original /a/ seems to have survived very
>late - at least as late as the 5th century - for several reasons, not least
>the French initial consonant in "chose" (co- would have given co-).

[Ed]

This may be somewhat less clear cut: actually, almost all French words that
maintained the initial Lat. co- are Latinizing neologisms ('mots savants', some
dating back to the early Middle Ages) that skipped the intermediate stages of
French language development. There is an enormous lot of that in French in
general (e.g. normal: moûtier, Latinizing: monastère). Some Lat. co- words
gave cö- (cor > coeur) or cui- (coquere > cuire); an exception is Lat.
coccinus > cochenille (incl. diminutivization), but that may just be
dissimilation. Most original French co- words stem from Lat. cu-.

>Likewise CL has sapere (short first e) but Romance points to sape:re.  And
>many more such examples.

[Ed]

Indeed. Probably the result of popular confusion and the Analogy Bulldozer.

>Another problem is the remarkable uniformity of the Vulgar Latin texts from
>the 3rd to the 8th centuries BC.  It is scarcely conceivable that peasants in
>Spain, France and Romania all spoke alike; yet they seem to have written
>alike.  So again, a simple equation of Vulgar Latin with proto-Romance may not
>be adequate.

[Ed]

It is more likely that Vulgar Latin was a later written language based upon
popular speech that continued to evolve throughout the Classical Latin period.
There are more languages with more than one written language: e.g. New Greek
(written Dhimotikí (Dèmotikè) = the official one since the early
seventies, and Katharévousa, the archaicizing version used before, and still
in some inscriptions: 'Ellás, instead of Ellada), Norwegian (the story was
already told here). In the Dutch speaking part of Belgium there is a tendency
toward an intermediate written language, between the common denominator of the
widely different dialects, and official Dutch (as determined by the Language
Union of Flanders and Holland). Most politicians use it.

In other words, I think Vulgar Latin may have been another attempt at unifying
the language (by selection of common features in the spoken
languages/dialects), but in another timeframe than CL (starting in the 3rd or
4th century A.D., when the disintegration of the classical world began). So,
Proto-Romance, as the unique origin of Romance languages, may never have
existed; the precursors of those languages probably were local Romance
dialects, with local sub-and superstrata (e.g. in Castilian: Basque and
Visigothic; in French (originally only spoken in the northern half):  mainly
Brythonic Celtic and some western Germanic. The example of causa > chose
strangely looks like some Celtic mutation influence/contamination, which does
not mean it must be).

>However, the claim that Classical Latin is proto-Romance is yet more
>difficult, or even far-fetched.   There are too many things from
>pre-classical Latin which have disappeared in the written language, but
>resurface in both Vulgar Latin and Romance.   The actual speech of the
>Romans must have maintained these features through the classical period.

[snip]

> CL developed through the first century BC, and even Lucretius
>(dies 55 BC) cannot be considered a model of Classical Latin.  CL, properly
>speaking, does have a very brief time span.   This is another sign of the
>fact that it is an artifical fashion, not an actual spoken language.

[Ed]

Actually, a language, even a written form of it, that lasts for 500 years or
more without any evolution worth mentioning looks like a natural
impossibility to me, especially considering the confusion of the time
(migrations, mixing with people from a different language group, general
illiteracy, no mass media, communications falling apart,...). So, after the
1st century A.D.it must have been a revered relic, as dead as the dodo.

Ed.